


put you back in your place

by Shenanigans



Category: Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space Opera, Gen, Multi, OUTLAWS!!, Prompt Fic, Well - Freeform, casual ridiculous world building, doodle, implied Joyfire, no beta we die and stuff mistakes in a duffel bag, the joyfire isn't really implied
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-18 00:48:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28983630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shenanigans/pseuds/Shenanigans
Summary: Nothing says "I love you" like robbing a bank to hide a murder.
Relationships: Roy Harper/Koriand'r/Jason Todd
Comments: 14
Kudos: 57





	put you back in your place

**Author's Note:**

> thanks hamjay for the prompt. This was a fun little doodle.

"I'm the nice one."

"He is," Kori said, smiling sweetly up at the man she was holding by the neck. He was slapping at her wrist, feet kicking ineffectually. She frowned beautifully and gave him a small shake. 

"Thanks, babe," Roy said, beaming at the holographic screen in front of the woman at the counter like it would bounce off the vibrant glowing letters advertising a 401K and high interest savings account to reach where Kori was tossing the guard like a crumpled paper bag. "Like I was saying-" he paused, ducked forward and read the name tag. "Jeanine. That's a lovely name. Anyway, Jeanine, I'm the _nice_ one. You're going to want to do what I'm saying. See? I'll even put the gun down."

The blaster made a soft plastic on plastic sound as he set it on the counter between them. He tilted his head, still smiling that crooked charming smile at the young woman with a classic styled haircut and pretty blue earrings that matched her eyes. He held up his hands, palm out. 

"Now, you're going to want to fill the bag with credits. No ink, no spatter tracers. No atomizers. Leave the bottom chit in each space. That's it. Just like that, you're doing so well. You really don't want the others to get hurt, right? That would be bad, being responsible for them." 

Kori hissed behind him, a crackle of flame and heat that kicked a smokey burning scent through the small lobby. It smelled like burning hair and sugar. Roy didn't look.

They were the distraction after all. Four floors up, Jason was killing a man. 

"He deserves it," Jason had told them over three beers and a plate of tacos from the cart around the corner. "He-"

"You don't have to explain, babe," Roy had said around a mouthful of chicken and fresh cilantro. The chicken was rubbery but the cilantro tasted like wet and green, the corn tortillas tender and homemade. "Where you go, we go."

Kori had smiled, thumbing a bit of sour cream into her mouth as she nodded. Her nose had rubbed against Jason’s temple and Roy had enjoyed the soft tightening around his eyes.

Now, Roy smiled at the woman as she trembled. "I like your earrings."

"My mom gave them to me," she whispered as she reached up to take them off. “For my birthday.”

"Oh, no, I don't _want_ your earrings, Jeanine. It was just a compliment."

"Five more minutes," Kori's voice soared over the crowd of people face down on the floor, the entire lobby made to look like a bank from Earth. The windows were vid screens flickering over a beautiful blue sky, the colors washing over the fabricated marble, the plastic counters laminated to look like oak with the screens shimmering with advertising. The building curved up the side of the platform, the chunk owned by the same family that owned most of the indentured service rings in this belt.

"Indentured Service," Jason had explained, flicking the information files out over the table top. He'd plucked one picture and tossed it to rotate in the display. "Fancy word for child slavery. Someone sells a portion of their life out of desperation, ends up defaulting and then he _owns_ them. He owns their _children_."

Jason had frowned and Roy had stopped from reaching for him across the glowing data sheets. Kori had already moved to touch his shoulder. He hadn't ducked out of her space. He had been willing to accept comfort that night. They would curl around him in the dark later.

"If we kill him, it won't stop there," Roy had said into the lull.

"We kill him and destroy his debt record. No debt, no more defaulted loans."

"No more children being-" Kori had cut off as she touched the brand tattooed just under the lightweight hem of Jason’s shirt.

"No more." Jason had looked up, pale eyes shadowed under his heavy brow, the weight of his hair, and the crippling beauty of his jaw gone hard with wickedness. Roy had smiled at him, charmed and in love.

The credits rattled loudly in the silence. Roy leaned into the counter, sliding the bag back and tossing it one handed for Kori to catch. Jeanine was the slender of a human born in low-grav. She was small, delicately boned and narrow like she could turn to the side and file in with the books. Platform kids were all small this way like humanity was accidentally adapting to the Can- adapting to a life lived on top of each other. 

The platform spanned a twenty mile ring that spun like a spindle. It wove the thread of their lives together. The central spike housed the algae-scrub stacks with the outer wheel flickering to grab the solar reflection from the massive asteroid belt. The main halls were filled with the low blue flicker of UV lights and the gray green haze of plastine and footprints. It had been white and glorious, a glowing pinnacle of humanity thrown into orbit generations ago. Now, it was faded and flaking, hot with breath, breeding, and bodies.

Jason had been born on Earth, built thick and muscled. He was breadth and weight like a bruise over broken bones. Kori had been born out in the black on a planet Roy had never seen. She burned like a star. Roy was just a pale platform rat, tall and slender with white skin that freckled under the blue burning light like a tender plant unused to full sun.

"You're doing really well, Jeanine. Just one more thing, beautiful. Think you can do that for me?"

"Faster," Kori called, lifting into the air with a throb of heat that prickled stiff on the back of Roy's clothes, crackled over the back of his neck where he had his bright hair caught up under a cap. 

"Faster," Roy had breathed, aching into the shift of Jason over him, those battered fingers tight and wondering in the wild copper red of his hair. Kori had stroked a hot hand down Jason’s spine, following it with a smeared smile. Jason had bitten at his mouth and complied. “ _Please_.”

"Heard! Jeanine, _beautiful_. I need you to set the Array right here for me, okay? Just set it right up here and then hold my eyes. We're not going to hurt you. I'm the nice one, remember?"

"They'll kill me," she whispered.

"Can't kill you if they're already dead, lovely. Promise." Roy wet his lips, moving the blaster out of the way. “And I promise, they’re dead.”

The Array was a small box built entirely of mined kyrtal ore, beautiful and sparkling metallic that shivered when it resettled onto the counter, the fingerprints Jeanine had left behind smoothing away. Roy touched the back of her hand, holding her eyes as he offered a small comfort and took one quick breath.

Connection always felt like diving and a little bit like dying. Roy didn’t have time to be anything but reckless with himself. For them? He’d do anything. He shoved the artificial fingers of his right hand into the array and braced as he stepped out of reality into the Array: the flood of information scrolling across his mind like being beaten with an endless snowstorm, a maelstrom, a tempest a--

"Open for me," Jason had whispered the first time, urgent and low. It had sounded like something true; it had sounded like his soul against Roy's jaw. "You can handle it."

"Baby, I _can't_ -" 

"You can." Jason had always sounded like the truth even when he was screaming and covered in bits of broken bone, broken hearts, and broken promises. “You can do anything for me.”

Roy hadn’t ever believed anyone the way he believed Jason.

He could do this. " **Stop**." 

And the data compiled, stilling in a perfect paused flurry of bits and composite. Roy was in a world of white and black, hazing into the reality of numbers and math. He touched the small packet in front of him, watching it glitter and twirl before he took a breath, took a moment to wonder at the beauty of it all, and took aim. The virus like an arrow nocked to a bow, burning against his fingers, against his cheek. It was red and orange, angry and blistering with purpose.

The world inside the array was black and white, but when Roy fired it burned in color. He wondered idly as he started to melt, if this is what Kori felt like all the time. If this is what it felt like to be a star.

He wanted to stay here where it was warm and bleeding, but a noise was prickling, pulling at him.

"Come on, babe. Come on back now.” 

“Thirty seconds,” Kori’s voice sounded like a song. It was urgent and thrumming.

“That's it. Come back. Do it for me, okay?"

"Jay-?"

Jeanine was crying, shaking in her pretty haircut and blue earrings. The counter was a scorched pile of melted metal and blackened bubbling plasticine. The wood didn't burn because it wasn't real, just puddled and puckered. Roy turned into the hand on his jaw, blinking like he was waking up. He couldn't feel his hand, but he could feel this.

"There you are."

"You done?" Roy asked. 

"Yeah."

“I did it.”

“You did.”

"Can we go home now?"

Jason smiled through the blood on his face. "Yeah. We can go home."

**Author's Note:**

> I do take prompts over on my [tumblr](https://irolltwenties.tumblr.com/)


End file.
